


I Want to Paint it Black

by Mac_N_Chez



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amara made castiel, Billie is so powerful, F/F, Fluff, M/M, amara is a good mom, angst???, im not good at tags, powerful!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28113111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mac_N_Chez/pseuds/Mac_N_Chez
Summary: In the beginning there was darkness
Relationships: Amara/Billie (Supernatural: Form and Void), Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	I Want to Paint it Black

In the beginning there was Darkness, or so we’re told. There was darkness and then there was light, a fundamental breakdown of what we understand, the most basic of principles, dark and light. Since the beginning of thought, darkness was perceived to be bad. The darkness, the night, brought with it danger, the inability to see, being the prey to those who could. Light was ideal, light meant safety, light meant the glorious ability to see and perceive. It was so easy to fall into the personification of the sun and the moon, the day and the night, the light and the darkness. The Persians were the closest in that regard, the constant fight between the light and the dark. Human’s had always wanted some explanation, some reason the world spins, and the idea that someone else was doing it made all the more sense. They idolized the sun, worshipped it with reckless abandon as the moon and the night sky mourned their own life in relation with the Earth before it even began. 

So yes, first there was darkness and then there was light. She was the darkness, the moon, the night sky, and the infinite stars above, the space inbetween creation, the molecules forgotten by air, both infinitely small and infinitely large, impossible to perceive and impossible to process. She was chaos to creation. 

One day they just existed together, her brother and her. There was nothing before them and suddenly there was everything, some formation that started it all. It had been incredible then, being the only two things in the universe, they were close because there was nothing else they could be. Chuck was the name that he had chosen, the first sound he had said. She was Amara, a twist of words flowing through space, the sound louder than anything ever heard and quieter than would ever be said again. 

They existed together in happy triumph, hand in hand as they searched through the emptiness. It hadn’t taken long to realize Chuck could create, he built small things first, shiny objects and jewels to wear on their wrists. This had amused Amara, it made her joyous to see her brother make things out of nothing. He wore coats and silks of white, infinite light like a chorus of a choir never heard. She wore silks of blacks, darker than the nothing of space and yet the whole of creation balled up into the fabric. The jewels adorning her wrists proof of the love she had in her heart for her brother, shining like the crown she wore on her head. 

That love and adoration shifted to envy all too quickly. Amara tried so desperately to create, she wanted to so badly, but Chuck refused to teach her. Every time she tried she just destroyed one of his creations, she always felt so guilty then, and yet he refused to show her how. Chuck was scared to show her creation, he liked being the one with the ability to build, if he showed that to her, what would make him special then? Amara grew bitter, but Chuck grew all the more narcissistic, he tried to make something better each time he did, build something more interesting. 

He created the first angel with Amara near, she watched him so closely, studying his every move with the cold precision unknown to the void beyond the eyes that glared at the angel. He wanted to show her that it could be more than just them, that there could be others. He had sculpted him out of nothing, built him in seconds but also years, time not yet existing. The angel had blinked at Chuck, his wings twitching slightly. He was named Michael, a word new to their lips but musical in its sound. Heaven was close behind, a beautiful place filled with light and adoration and love, Amara’s darkness a stain on the perfect cloth of the newest plane of existence. The other archangels were soon to follow, Lucifer, Raphael, and Gabriel all endlessly filled with love and devotion to their father. Amara once again grew jealous in her ways, her brother not speaking to her, too busy in his newest project. She hid in the gardens of heaven, the flowers reminding her of the jewels that once held her wrists like he held her hand, their search for somewhere to call home long forgotten by the intoxication of creation. Chuck called himself God, a new name to mark his new beginning. She had scoffed,  _ new beginning? He was not new, he would never be new.  _

She sat in the garden, trying once more to create on her own, but this time it had worked. She was powered by spite, she wanted Chuck to see how she felt, see how it stung to not be the only one she needed. She held the makings of a fledgling in her hands, it’s wings as black as her own, the night sky shining through them in a beautiful array of the cosmos. The angel opened its eyes slowly, blue adjusting to the world for the first time. The small angel smiled at Amara, reaching up to her in a wordless ask for an embrace. She immediately complied, clutching the small child to her chest and spinning joyously. She had done it! She had created! She looked down at the fledgling once more, who shifted in her grasp, trying to sleep.  _ Castiel _ , she had said,  _ that shall be your name, and let all of heaven rejoice in it, for I am your mother and you are my son.  _

She had called Gabriel down, asking a favor of him. He was the trickster of the family, the one who she knew would help if persuaded. She asked if he could switch in Castiel for another Angel, swapping them and suggesting the name to Chuck. Gabriel had agreed happily, all too excited to meet his new brother. All the angels were related, that was what was perceived, but Castiel was different, he always had been.

Gabriel and Castiel had snuck back to her later, the garden her home. They became her children, whether biologically or not, they were still related by the heartbeat of love. They played under her wings and she watched them learn to fly, proud of the angels they were becoming. She would tell them stories of what it was like before heaven, and the new world their father was building. 

Chuck had discovered their meeting all too quickly, shutting them away from Amara. She was furious,  _ who was he to lock them away? Who was he to hide the children she had cared for?  _ In her rage she did what she only knew how, destruction, chaos, darkness. A meteor of pure unadulterated rage hit the earth like a bomb, destroying everything on the surface.  _ Fucking dinosaurs,  _ she had thought.

Chuck had screamed at her and she screamed back, every curse they had with each other being brought into plain view. In time, how much exactly is unknown, not having existed yet to say, she was locked away. Her crown was thrown from her body on impact, and she feared it had been destroyed. She was born with the crown alongside her, the only hope of a before in her mind, the want for a mother of her own in her heart, shattered with its passing. 

Gabriel had picked it up, hiding it away in the gardens of heaven that no one entered anymore, the remnants of a mother he helped lock away. She sat in her cage, rage filling her being. For years that’s all it was, anger at being locked away, rage at being the one left to rot in a small cell of nothingness for all eternity. It became a semblance of insanity, she wanted to die, she wanted to kill her brother, she wanted to scream. She used to beg, pray to death to have mercy on her soul. Her prayers were never answered, of course they weren’t, she never got what she begged for. 

_ O’ Death, won’t you spare me over and over. _

Amara sat festering in her cage, unraveling and putting herself back together again. He called her evil, she was born into the darkness so darkness she became. She never believed in prophecy, fate not something she cared enough to reason with, but this prophecy she will fulfill. This prophecy he would live in regret of, she wouldn’t kill him, she would make him suffer first, ruin his beautiful creations first.

_ When God is gone and the devil takes hold, who will have mercy on your soul? _

There are places where time doesn’t exist to those there to perceive it. Time passes of course, never ending, changing, flowing, moving, and so on forever, time is always there. A theory exists that time is woven into the fabric of our very universe, that time is a fundamental part of life. There are others that say time is a human construct. Amara did not know of time. It didn’t exist, didn’t have a word before she was locked into her prison cell of nothing. Nothing used to be beautiful, nothing was heaven, but nothing had never included her brother’s betrayal.

Chuck had said that it wasn’t her story, it was his. He was the one creating, he was the writer, she was the fire in the fireplace that burns his books in seconds. When she left her cage she refused to be the fire, the forgotten ember of destruction, she would write her own story, starting with finding her crown.

__________

She had forgiven Chuck after a while, forgive and forget as they say. As time went on though she realized her brother’s story needed…  _ intervention.  _ He wasn’t good to them, of course no writer is perfectly good to their characters, but enough is enough. 

She had watched Castiel die, sat next to Dean Winchester as he wept over the body of a lover not yet had. She was blinded by her grief, mourning her only true child, her only true creation by blood and nothing else. A banshee couldn’t compare to the symphony of wails they created together, reverberating through the edges of the universe. Dean’s own screams being amplified by Amara’s. She had begged her brother to fix this,  _ fix it now.  _ But he had just said,  _ In due time, Amara. We must wait.  _

She felt closer to Dean that night then she had through the whole of the Mark of Cain. She had stood by his side as Castiel’s body burned on the pyre, she had traveled along with them as they went home. She watched Dean sit in the angel’s room and go through his things, weeping once more. A storm had hit that night, it lasted for days and flooded many parts of America. Dean had thought it fitting, like the earth was mourning with him. Little did he know it was the least a goddess older than the concept of time could do to mourn on Earth. She remembered it being companionable, sitting next to Dean as they both lost a loved one, even if it was a different type of love. At one point he had whispered out to nothing that it felt like some part of Cas, as he called him, was still there. He wasn’t wrong of course, Castiel’s grace resided in his soul from a handprint long forgotten, a scar fixed, and her own essence similar to his grace. They all collided and crashed together to give him a sense of his angel’s soul still sitting in that room in that bunker in Kansas. 

It was Jack who took the remnants of their wails left in the corners of creation and shot them in the general direction of the empty. She had learned to love Jack, forgive him, but she didn’t know her son was alive. She’d left too soon, he was everywhere in the bunker and she had to get to the other side of the world to feel and semblance of peace. 

It had been later, when she’d heard about what had happened to the Winchesters from a former Reaper, now death. Billie had approached her when she’d heard that Chuck was gone for a bit, she had wanted to meet the Darkness herself. They’d taken a shining to each other, Amara getting her breaks from work and Billie telling her everything big that’s been happening. It just so happened an angel coming back to life didn’t seem to be big enough news to her. 

Amara had decided to apologize to the Winchesters, see if she could help them at the very least lock up her brother, like he had done to her. She appeared in the middle of the war table, her heels clicking on the surface as she dropped. Both Winchester’s immediately pointed their guns at her, glaring daggers.

She looked down at them, not even flinching, “So skittish, geez.”

“What do you want, Amara?” Sam cocked his gun.

Dean mirrored his brother’s action, “Working with Chuck, ain’t that right?”

Amara just turned to look between them before sighing and snapping her fingers, the guns disappearing from their hands.

“Hey-” Dean started, before Amara cut him off.

“Don’t worry, they’re just in the back of your car. You know it wouldn’t have worked anyway, and it’s so hard to talk when you have a useless metal object in your face.” She sighed, moving her yellow sundress in her left hand, just messing with the fabric. “Boys, I came to discuss my brother. Yes he is being what you would call a total douche, and I hate him for that. I just want to help all of this stop, he’s already gone too far killing one of the only things I’ve ever created.” She gestured vaguely towards the sky, like that’s still where Chuck resided these days.

Sam glanced at Dean, trying to figure out what she wanted and relate it to his brother. Before anyone could continue though, the metal door of the bunker opened and down walked Castiel and Jack, both carrying bags.

Castiel rifled through his bag, not really seeing what was happening, and Jack had no idea who this woman was. “Sam! Dean! I got some tomatoes, and some more chips, because Dean has stopped chewing them at this point and just sucks them down like a vacuum cleaner, and Jack got some… new… clothe-” He finally looked up, cutting himself off halfway through his sentence, processing what he was seeing. “Amara?”

Amara was frozen in her spot, “Castiel? I haven’t talked to you in eons. Is it really you?”

Dean turned to Castiel, “You knew her?”

“I don’t-” Castiel paused, mulling it over, “I don’t remember her, I just remember what you all told me. My time in heaven has parts that are kind of blurry, but I think I would have remembered her.”

Amara blinked, tears threatening to spill from her face, she stepped down from the table, walking over to Castiel, her heels clicking. Once she stood right in front of him, close enough to see his face well, she nearly did cry. “Do you really not remember me?”

Castiel just nodded, looking like a deer in headlights. She brought her hands up, cupping his face. “Oh baby, what have they done to you? What has heaven done to your mind?”

“What?” Castiel and Dean asked at the same time, Cas eyeing the hunter with worry.

“Can’t you see it? Haven’t you ever wondered why you were always closer to Gabriel? How you’re the only angel with black wings? How you’re closer to humanity than the others? How you’re more powerful than the other angels? How you were the only one sent to save Dean? Did you ever wonder what helped keep Demons away in hell, just a bit farther away, distracted them easily? Can’t you see how portions of your perfect memory skips tracks, no matter how hard you try to focus on it?” Castiel stared at her, his eyes shifting back and forth quickly. 

Amara rubbed her thumb on his cheek, trying to calm him. “Castiel, they reprogrammed you. Heaven stole your memories, stole your memories of  _ me,  _ of every other time you’ve rebelled or gone against gods so called will.” Castiel’s eyes started watering, holding on to Amara’s arms lightly.

“Can you…” he paused, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “Can you bring them back?”

Amara nodded, moving her hands to hold the sides of his head rather than his jaw. She drew forth memories long forgotten by time, leaving the torture used to forcibly forget them to stay forgotten. Memories rushed through Castiel’s brain like a tidal wave. Playing with Gabriel in the gardens, Amara teaching them how to fly, his first rebellion, choosing not to kill the sons of Egypt, and so many, many,  _ many  _ more. He felt like he was drowning and like he could breathe for the first time. He finally opened his eyes to see Amara in front of him, tears threatening to fall down her face. “Mom?” his voice cracked.

“Castiel,” she croaked, bringing him into a tight hug. 

“How could they make me forget you? How cruel could they-” Castiel cried against her shoulder. 

“Shhhh, shh I know, but I’m here now, right? That’s gotta be something. And we’ll fight heaven for doing this to you. They will suffer.” She moved back from the hug, holding his face again. Her own face contorted to one of confusion, “Huh, that’s odd.” 

“What?” every other person in the room asked, glancing nervously at each other. 

“You’re missing grace, and… your wings are broken beyond what your grace can repair.” She looked over at Dean who looked down guiltily. She knew it was Dean’s fault technically, but he shouldn’t blame himself for it. She smiled slowly, “luckily for you, I can fix both. I did make you after all.” 

“You can fix his wings?” Dean asked, moving closer, if not to just be near Castiel, his presence calming to him. 

“Yes. I just need a quiet room and a bed to be carried to if I pass out. Creating is one thing, creating an exact replica of grace is another. I’ll get it, I just might need to rest afterwards.” Amara dropped her hands, turning to look at Jack and winking at him. “Oh, and Dean.” 

Dean turned to look at her, a question silently playing on his tongue. 

“Call my friend Billie will you? She’s been begging to see this.” 

__________

Everything had been set up nice and neat. Well, not exactly neat. They were going to do it in Castiel’s room, so that he could rest. Amara had taken Dean to the side when he was freaking out to explain everything to him. 

“He’s going to be tired at first, he might not wake up for days. His grace has to get used to being fully a part of him again. I might be asleep for days, but that is up in the air and you won’t have to take care of me for that.” she had said, gripping his left arm like a lifeline. Dean just nodded, worry painting his features. 

She had then moved to Castiel’s room, the angel already asleep. Dean walked in soon after, Jack, Sam, and him ready to watch the angel be healed. Amara turned her head over her shoulder, “Dean.” 

“Yeah?”

“Did you call her?” she asked, not looking directly at him, but at the wall next to her.

“Yeah I-” A whoosh was heard and a clack of boots on tile, Amara didn’t turn to look at the reaper, choosing instead to look down at the angel in front of her.

Amara held her head up ever so slightly, breathing out slowly, “Billie.”

“Sup,” she said, her cool monotone voice casual. Her smile looked partly sinister and partly amused, she was indifferent to the outcome of this healing, only here for a show. 

Amara put her hands on Castiel’s chest, starting the process. Everyone in the room, excluding those unconscious, indifferent, or busy rebuilding an angel, held their breath. This was it. She drew forth as many atoms she could, rebuilding his grace piece by piece. Moving it to flow through his veins like blood would, powering him back up to his former level. She started on the wings next building each blood vessel and cell and muscle until it was solid and real on another plane. When she finally finished, she dropped backwards, her arms falling limply at her sides. Sam was the one to reach towards her, expecting this to happen. However no one expected Billie to also reach forward towards her, worry painting her face. 

Sam put his arms underneath the goddess’ legs, picking her up in a bridal carry as Dean and Jack moved towards Cas’ side. Sam tilted his head towards the door, an unspoken  _ I’m going to put her in a room.  _ Billie disappeared soon after, glaring at Dean and Jack.

Dean stayed at his side the entire time he was asleep, which was not the best decision for his health, but since when did Dean Winchester care about his health? He felt like a soldier’s wife, waiting for him to wake up after a surgery of some kind,  _ praying  _ he’d wake up. Sadly the only goddess in their corner as of late is also currently unconscious in room 34. He had sat there for hours, sometimes pacing around, sometimes talking to Jack, only ever leaving to use the bathroom and shower. 

Dean was going to take a shower when he saw the door to room 34 open. He was hoping Amara was awake, and not that it was a monster coming to kill them at 3 am, but based on their luck it was probably the latter. He pushed the door open slowly, turning to see a woman sitting in a chair, next to Amara’s bed, her head in her hands.

“Billie?”

“Dean.” she shot back, not moving her eyes from Amara’s body just inches away from her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, stepping a bit farther into the room, leaning against the door frame. He saw her coat and scythe hanging up in the corner, only her black dress to accompany her. She looked tired and scared and annoyed and indifferent and every emotion in the book all at once. She was stripped bare in front of him, but it was not him who was meant to see her like this, he wasn’t supposed to be here. He felt like he was intruding on something not even _ Amara  _ was meant to see. 

“Same thing you are.” She finally leaned back to look at Dean. Her cheeks were streaked in tears, like a map of her suffering and worry. It was ironic for death to care so much about the health of an individual who caused so much of it, but then again reaping was her job. Dean was surprised to see someone with such indifference hold so many emotions. Billie probably saw the irony too, but couldn’t be bothered to care. 

It suddenly hit him like a freight train. “You love her.”

Billie blinked at him, surprised. She didn’t look like Death in that moment, she didn’t look like a reaper,  _ hell,  _ she didn’t even look like a scary boss. Billie looked like every nameless woman he’d had to console because their husband or boyfriend died or got hurt on one of their countless hunts. He had seen hundreds before and he would encounter countless more again. She was hurting and he couldn’t do anything but sit and watch her from the doorframe of room 34. She glanced back at Amara, her arm twitching like she wanted to touch her hand, “Who wouldn’t?”

“She’s the darkness.” It was a fact, but it didn’t feel like it was an excuse, or like it had any weight on his tongue.

“And I’m Death. What does that matter? Who she is has nothing to do with it. She’s enchanting and interesting and absolute chaos, yet she refuses to deal in absolutes. She’s the whole of the world, and I’m the priest at her temple pretending that she’ll bless me. I’m here to see her wake up, make sure she lives to blink again, even if I know she will without me next to her.” She looked back at Dean, staring straight into his soul, “And like I said, I reckon you’re doing the same.” 

She wasn’t wrong, he was doing the same. He was the priest kneeling at the altar of love and begging for it to spare his heart, begging for him to walk another day and smile at him and look at him and just  _ exist near him. _ Sadly, beyond his love the altar was barren. What did he have to offer besides his home and his heart, he was a broken man, burnt by the fires of hell and the tortures of demons. But was the heart and the home not the temple in itself? Was that not the land in which he worshipped? Dean Winchester wasn’t a religious man, worship wasn’t for him, but if worship was pure belief and love and trust, then Dean Winchester worshipped Castiel. And maybe an offering of love was all that  _ was  _ needed, maybe his heart was worth more than any amount of gold he could lay at that altar. He sat in silence just looking at her for a minute, “Well, what do we do then? Just sit and wait for some, I don’t know, god, to notice us? To decide we’re worthy of them?”

“Is that what we fear then? Do we fear the rejection or do we fear the change? Will I live long enough to love her the way she should be loved? Or will Chuck kill me before I get the chance? Or do I fear that she will reject me and I will have to live eternally with the knowledge that she’s still out there, and I still love her. They say time heals all wounds, but not when time doesn’t exist to you. Time is irrelevant when you’re immortal, what are you tracking if not your own death?” She looked at Amara and Dean could see the yearning in her eyes, the hope and love and pure adoration for a being that probably never got any. “Dean,” He looked up at her. “If there’s one thing I know from all my existence, it is that that Angel in that room loves you, and if you don’t go in there and Carpe the fuck out of that diem then I don’t know what to tell you.” 

Billie couldn’t understand really, wasn’t it obvious that the angel loved him? Wasn’t it clear? They say hindsight is 20/20 but the man has  _ eyes.  _ If he was a priest at the angel’s temple, then the god had been blessing him for centuries. Why didn’t he go to them? Why didn’t he love him? Why couldn’t  _ she _ love her? She was spiraling again, but it was so easy too. Billie was a woman of a hard exterior but when she sits and thinks it’s hard to stop. Dean had left the room now, probably to take a shower or something, she didn’t care. She couldn’t bring herself to care. Hot tears were running down her face now, following the tear tracks like roads on a street. Her cheeks were puffy and her face was hot, and she couldn’t stop  _ thinking  _ and-

“You stayed,” a sweet voice said through the screaming of her own thoughts. 

“Amara!” She threw herself at her, hugging the goddess as tightly as she could. 

“Hello, hello, yes. How long was I asleep for?” Amara asked, rubbing Billie’s back softly.

“36 hours and 13 minutes, give or take.” Billie looked up at her from where she was hugging the woman, “Sorry.”

Amara just smiled at her, “Nothing to be sorry about, you stayed.” 

“Of course I stayed.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“And yet here I am.” Billie paused, “Could I… stay here for a minute longer?” 

“Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all I love the idea of Amara making Cas


End file.
